Footholds

Where I dug the logs into the rise

 to make the steps along the valley

 I forget how many years ago

 their wood has dissolved completely now

 disappearing into the curled slope

 gone without my seeing it happen

 while the green clouds of the trees have grown

 above their mingled shadows

 yet I set my feet down in the same

 places I did when the steps were there

 without even thinking about them

 Father and Mother friend upon friend

 what I remember of them now

 footholds on the slope

 in the silent valley this morning

 Wednesday with few clouds and an east wind

--W.S. Merwin

The footholds in the hill that have faded remind the poet of people in his past who provided footholds on the journey--on the landscapes of the past-- that brings him to this present moment.  Though he remembers these people now and perhaps the footholds he knew when they built them, in our lives there are footholds we don't remember and perhaps never realized that were built by others (I think of teachers of various kinds, for instance) but that eventually we came to think were our own ideas.  We just put our feet down there without remembering.

It also may be that we built footholds for others that we remember but they don't (parents for children, for example), but also footholds we built for others that they might remember, but we don't, perhaps because we didn't even know we were building them.  And now we may never know what they were, but perhaps the possibility provides some solace and meaning to the time stretched out behind us, as well as our present moment.